Winning Post

This week in Winning Post

After a slightly eerie Rosehill autumn carnival, attention turns this Saturday to Randwick for day one of The Championships.

And crowd or no crowd (spoiler: no crowd), what a day it will be, with the Doncaster Mile leading the way. Star Kiwi mare Melody Belle hasn't had a lot of luck on this Australian trip, with a biased track thwarting her in the Futurity and a desperately unfortunate run in the All-Star Mile. Can she break through at Randwick? Joel Marshall's preview will lead this week's Winning Post.

Also on a quality-packed Randwick card, the sprinters duke it out in the T.J. Smith and the staying three-year-olds have their grand final in the ATC Australian Derby,

Elsewhere, it's Anniversary Vase day at Caulfield. There's black-type action too at Morphettville and Ascot.

Our form coverage kicks off on Friday with full form guides for the Cranbourne night meeting plus Benalla and Canberra during the day, as well as fields, colours and selections for Friday's other TAB meetings.

The metro racing this Saturday is at Caulfield in Melbourne, Randwick in Sydney, Morphettville in Adelaide, Doomben in Brisbane and Ascot in Perth.

Winning Post carries full-colour liftout guides for all those meetings plus Werribee (Vic/SA/Tas edition), Hawkesbury (NSW edition) and Roma (Queensland edition), as well as fields, tips, ratings and/or colours for other TAB Saturday cards.

On Sunday we've got liftout formguides for four more TAB meetings plus fields, ratings, tips and colours for a stack more Sunday and Monday programs.

Don't forget Winning Post now carries trackwork reports for all four Melbourne training tracks, all three in Sydney, Morphettville in Adelaide and a general Brisbane report.

Away from the form, we've got news columns from NSW, six Victorian districts, SA and Tasmania.

Our readers have their say on page 4, while further back in the book Shane Templeton reminisces, Paul Richards presents his unique take on the sport, Tony Kneebone brings you his Snippets column and Number Cruncher delivers the stats that matter.

Winning Post costs $5.50 and is available Thursday afternoon in selected Ballarat newsagents, the crack of dawn Friday elsewhere.

... More

Goldfields: Promising filly keeps it in the family .................................................................................................................................................

Central Victoria: Butch, Goodrich the punters' pals .................................................................................................................................................

NSW: Relaxed lifestyle the secret to Nat's success .................................................................................................................................................

SA: Lachie on a roll .................................................................................................................................................

Western Victoria: Power to the paddock after impressive debut .................................................................................................................................................

More Stories

Inside Winning Post April 4 edition you'll find liftout form guides for:

Friday:

Cranbourne (night), Benalla, Canberra

Saturday:

Caulfield, Randwick, Morphettville, Doomben, Ascot, Spendthrift Australia Park Werribee (Vic/SA/Tas edition), Hawkesbury (NSW edition), Roma (Qld edition)

Sunday:

Echuca, Wellington, Gundagai, Toowoomba

Eye Catchers

Each week Paul Richards identifies horses from recent race meetings that he believes are ready to win. Here we update you when they are about to have their next start.

Rosehill Gardens Saturday - R6 N2 Mustajeer 2nd

Rosehill Gardens Saturday - R9 N3 Cascadian 1st

Bendigo Saturday - R7 N2 Star Surprise 9th

Bendigo Saturday - R9 N12 Big Night Out 1st

Results

Letter of the Week

A matter of timing

Mitch Matheson (28/3) rightly points out that many of our major winners this autumn will carry asterisks against their names given the limited competition available due to restrictions on the movements of people and therefore presumably horses.
But I doubt the winners will object too much, even if those in the biggest races at The Championships have to settle for half the prizemoney.
It’s instructive to look back on the last example of a similar (though far less serious) crisis — the equine influenza outbreak of 2007.
EI’s effect was restricted to the spring, so it’s interesting to look at the results of the spring majors — the Caulfield Cup, Cox Plate and Melbourne Cup.
Do people view Efficient as an unworthy Melbourne Cup winner? I don’t, but it’s worth noting that the 21-runner field included only three horses trained in the northern hemisphere — Purple Moon (second), Mahler (third) and Tungsten Strike (last).
El Segundo thoroughly deserved his Cox Plate considering he ran in three of them, finishing second in 2006 and fourth in 2009 after a long absence through injury.
There were no foreign raiders in that race but there were some fairly handy types including Haradasun, Miss Finland, Divine Madonna, Zipping, the aforementioned Efficient and Lad of the Manor.
Admittedly Caulfield Cup winner Master O’Reilly was no superstar and had 29 subsequent starts for three minor placings.
But it’s worth remembering that a genuine star in Maldivian probably would have won that race easily if some fool hadn’t placed a camera in his starting stall.
Sometimes it’s just about being in the right place at the right time.

Bobby Webb
Campbells Creek (Vic)